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“Please.” His voice catches and suddenly he’s not the cold-hearted man I got that last day together in August. He’s someone else, someone who tended to me through panic attacks and jellyfish stings, someone who wanted me. Maybe I should take pity on us both and let him say what he has to say. It’s dangerous, I’m already teetering on the edge, but sometimes a girl needs a little danger to feel alive. Ethan taught me that.
Forty-One
Inod and peer around the darkened landscape. It’s late and quiet, the only sound is the rolling of the ocean waves and my own pounding heart. At least Sybil’s bedroom light next door is out. I’m sure she’s fast asleep. That woman has the opposite of insomnia. As soon as her head hits the pillow, she’s in dreamland. Always so comfortable with her world, always so safe. It’s another confirmation that even though we look alike, we couldn’t be more different.
“Wait.” I pin Ethan with a glare, a sudden thought coming to me. “How did you know this was my bedroom?”
He exhales a slow breath, his voice wooden when he answers. “I followed you home after the party, walked along the beach and watched the house for you. You came out here.”
He’s right. I did come out to the balcony. The second we got home, everyone hid away to their different corners of the house, and I ended up out here with my reading light and my fantasy book, not that I got much reading done. My mind was a mess then and my mind is a mess now.
“Isn’t that kind of creepy?” I raise a brow.
“I wasn’t done looking at you.”
Definitely creepy if it was anybody else. With Ethan it’s not exactly a compliment as much as it’s a revelation. He wasn’t done looking at me.
There’s one question I have to know the answer to before I send him away, one question that would make sense of so many torments. “Did you know I was a Laurence before I did?”
He stares at me like whatever he’s about to say next holds the weight of the world. It tips the scales and I already know the answer. My heart sinks.
“Say it,” I whisper my demand, voice laced with the pain of betrayal.
“I suspected,” he admits. “But I didn’t know until the day I flew you to Boston.”
The day I found the photograph of Sybil.
“You wanted nothing to do with me because I was a Laurence or because you realized I didn’t only look like Sybil but was actually related to her?”
His expression fills with regret and he takes my hands. I should pull away, but I let him. “I wanted everything to do with you, but you being a Laurence made it impossible.”
I squeeze those hands. “For who?” My voice is shaking. Maybe my hands are too. Maybe all of me is. “I didn’t even know about them and you certainly weren’t the one to tell me.”
“And I should have. I realize that now.”
I start to pull away, already imagining going back into my room and leaving him out here to stew in his own self-loathing. As far as I’m concerned, he should feel terrible about not telling me the truth. He should feel like an asshole about all of it, especially the part where I ended up with legal trouble despite following through with our agreement. But those things don’t hurt nearly as much as what he did with me. Taking my virginity because he wasn’t over someone else is unforgivable. And dumping me in Boston when I confronted him with the truth is not something I can get over. But worst of all was allowing me to fall in love with him.
“Please, Arden.” He’s practically begging. If I asked him to get on his knees and grovel right now, I think he would. “Let me explain everything.”
Against my better judgment, I decide to let him.
“We can’t have this conversation out here.” I shouldn’t be doing this, but I need answers. “Come on then.” I ignore the alarm bells in my head and let him into my room.
It’s dark and cool and quiet in here tonight, and as I slide the glass door shut, he lingers closer than a shadow. His presence is too big, his energy too magnetic. I can’t be in the dark alone with this man. I don’t know how to make good decisions around him or how to be the grown-up woman I’ve become instead of the insecure girl I was two years ago.
I slip away from him and flip on the bedside lamp. The light makes this moment more real somehow, illuminating the truth of being together. This isn’t a memory or a dream or a fantasy, this is really him. I catch his eyes sweeping over my bare legs before they spring up to my face. Is he remembering what my legs looked like wrapped around his body? I hate myself for remembering the very same thing, but the memories simply won’t let me go.
“Explain yourself.” My voice is a low demanding whisper, but I sound strong and confident despite unraveling inside. Am I taking steps backwards toward the old me instead of forward to the new one? I can’t let that happen.
I’ve had sex with three other men since my time with Ethan but none of them came close to making me feel the way that he did. The first was during a college party my first semester, a one-night stand just so that I could say Ethan wasn’t the last man to touch me. It was rushed and terrible. The other two were mediocre boyfriends, the romances fizzling out within a few months. Sometimes I worry that I’ll be looking for what Ethan gave my body for the rest of my life, that I’ll never be able to find someone who can make me feel the way he did.
And yet here he is, looking like a tortured Romeo here to woo his Juliet. We even have the balcony to prove it. The warring families. But that story ended in tragedy. And while technically ours did too, we’re both still alive. We don’t have to go back there or test our luck. But first, I need answers. Answers might not give me peace, but at least I’ll be able to finally move on.
“You look good, Juliet,” he says, as if reading my mind and I suck in a breath.
“Don’t you dare call me that.”
He holds up his hands. “Arden. Sorry.”
